The Town of Oro Valley recently terminated its Tourism Development contract with Visit Tucson. It wasn't a complete surprise, as the Town had been ringing the bell of discontent for a few months, after Town Staff couldn't figure out how to quantify the ROI of the contract (which, of course they couldn't, as they don't speak DMO).
But what is a surprise is that the Town terminated the contract without a Plan B, sending staff scrambling to figure out how they were going to replace the considerable sales and marketing muscle of Visit Tucson on behalf of their two major resorts; facilities into which Visit Tucson had booked over $11 million in business over the past two years. Now, those resorts don't even appear on the Visit Tucson website.
But, here's the thing. If the Town decided they wanted to take Fire protection in house from another entity, don't you think they'd go out and buy a couple fire trucks and hire some professional firefighters before unilaterally severing a contract for services and leaving its residents completely unprotected? Possibly for months, if not a year (if not longer)?
Why would the Town Manager believe this to be any different?
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